We have had a busy and exciting start to P2, with lots of opportunities to get to know each other and explore the different areas in our classroom. The boys and girls were very excited to meet our class teddy called Barnaby Bear and told him a little bit about themselves. 
“We passed Barnaby around to tell him our names and how we are feeling” – Sunny
We talked lots about what we wanted our class to feel like, look like and sound like, then thought about how this linked to the UNCRC Rights of the Child. The children worked in groups to think about their ‘dream classroom’ and shared their ideas with the class. 
The boys and girls decided they would like class jobs and felt it was important to have a messenger, coat peg monitor, water bottle monitor,art trolley monitor, lunch box monitor and pencil pot monitor. 
“We made hand prints for the jobs” -Jamie
Our big focus over the last few weeks has been thinking about our emotions, what makes us feel certain ways and what we can do to manage our own emotions. We really enjoyed ‘The Colour Monster’ story and made our very own rock monsters to add into our feeling jars when we come in each morning. This has meant the adults in the class can check in to see how the children are feeling each day.
“We put our monsters in the jars with how we’re feeling. Like if we’re sad, mad or happy” – Jude
We have also been thinking about diversity and what makes us unique. Reading different Elmer stories helped us to talk about why it is a good thing to be different and think about our own interests and personalities. We have even been making our own patches to join together which will make an elephant display for all of P2.
There have been lots of opportunities to revise our learning from P1, with us going over our number bonds to 10 and really focusing on our number concepts. We have used different concrete materials to make 10 and have been working hard during our mental maths sessions. In literacy, we have written about what makes us unique and created our own stories. There have been opportunities to practice our sounds and different reading strategies too. 
We have spent lots of time getting to know our classroom and the different play areas within it. We have been thinking carefully about what we would like our context for learning to be and what resources we would like in our areas. There has been lots of super building going on in our construction area and some impressive works of art created. We especially enjoyed making our own monsters out of wooden spoons. 
